The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

dr.zaeus:The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

dr.zaeus:The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

Sounds like it wasn't the computer so much as the art program it was using. It was a proprietary graphics file for some program that hasn't existed for 29 years.

So it wasn't a painting of any kind, it was a color-filled photograph. At least that time, he used his own photo instead of someone else's. That same article also shows that this process of restoration was completed a year ago, so this latest article is really just for publicity of the exhibition and documentary

"At the Amiga 1000's debut, the master of ceremonies remarked that Warhol's portrait of Ms. Harry was the first of its kind. "

Sure, because the product had not yet been released. But I'm sure none of the programmers could possibly have ever filled an area with color, using a tool they developed specifically for that purpose.

ArkPanda:dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

Sounds like it wasn't the computer so much as the art program it was using. It was a proprietary graphics file for some program that hasn't existed for 29 years.

ArkPanda:Sounds like it wasn't the computer so much as the art program it was using. It was a proprietary graphics file for some program that hasn't existed for 29 years.

If the files were standard IFF-ILBM, then any decent image viewer could handle it (XnView does, as example... even HAM6 and HAM8). But if it was some DigiPaint specific format or an ILBM with weird stuff like scrolling color lookup tables, then yeah, those are a bit harder to deal with.

/working A3000 in the basement//most of the old paint programs are available on abandonware sites///AmiNet is still up, with a number of conversion utilities

dr.zaeus:The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

interestingly enough I was reminded of my high school days where we used deluxpaint for our TV station grafics.

HAM mode was a mode on the Amiga that allowed for it to display 4096 colors at once. At the time PC's were primarily limited to 16 colors or less, and I think the IIe was limited to what, 8 or 16 colors?

I was a big Amiga guy for a long time. Had an original Amiga (which was retroactively renamed the Amiga 1000), an Amiga 500, 600 (why??), 1200, 3000, and 4000. I had an original boing-ball decal signed by R. J. Mical and Jay Miner.

dr.zaeus:Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement.

Yeah, Nerd! I wouldn't be caught dead with a 500...mainly because I already have a A1000 & A4000 in my basement. Tried to breath life back into the 4000 a year ago, but the hard drive was shot (operational, but no data found). I also couldn't find a monitor that would support the slow refresh rates of the A1000.

Jackpot777:dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

This. Here are a bunch of kids, loading Commodore 64 games from the original tapes. Thirty years after its release.

If you read the actual paper it's WAY more complex than that. Warhol was contracted by Commodore to create art for the press release of the Amiga 1000. Therefore, the software was not public yet. They said that Warhol's machine was running a pre-release Kickstart module (build 27.6) when the 'v1' was build 31.10 (or something similar). The graphics files could not be opened in an emulator or on an existing Amiga 500/1000 because the software was again a pre-release version. Ultimately though the converter they wrote was extremely simple. The 'hacker' they had reverse engineer it discovered that the format was identical to the format used in the commercial software, but had slightly different file headers.

dr.zaeus:The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

I still don't get the draw, but I do find it hilarious that even though I can never find my keys or my cell phone or where I parked my car, I know for a fact that the cheat code for "Ghostbusters" the game was "Owen", and POKER would lock up a running TRS-80 or C64.

thespindrifter:dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

I still don't get the draw, but I do find it hilarious that even though I can never find my keys or my cell phone or where I parked my car, I know for a fact that the cheat code for "Ghostbusters" the game was "Owen", and POKER would lock up a running TRS-80 or C64.

Farking autocorrect!! POKE182. ARRRGH!

Also, how sad is it that dad can still use 35 year old discs, but I can barely recover data from 10 year old hard drives or optical media? We need better ways to ensure the long term viability of digital media; so much of our history and technology is going to be lost forever because of optical media "rot" and VHS tape degradation.

phimuskapsi:Jackpot777: dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

This. Here are a bunch of kids, loading Commodore 64 games from the original tapes. Thirty years after its release.

If you read the actual paper it's WAY more complex than that. Warhol was contracted by Commodore to create art for the press release of the Amiga 1000. Therefore, the software was not public yet. They said that Warhol's machine was running a pre-release Kickstart module (build 27.6) when the 'v1' was build 31.10 (or something similar). The graphics files could not be opened in an emulator or on an existing Amiga 500/1000 because the software was again a pre-release version. Ultimately though the converter they wrote was extremely simple. The 'hacker' they had reverse engineer it discovered that the format was identical to the format used in the commercial software, but had slightly different file headers.

thespindrifter:My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

Unfortunately the time will come when working 5.25" discs will be near to impossible or impossible to find. Although it's less than 100% authentic he may want to invest in something like this:http://www.sd2iec.co.uk/id14.html

It's an SD card reader that connects to an actual C64 to read and write disc images. It even looks like a tiny wee 1541 drive.

I loved, loved, love Deluxe Paint. To this day, I've never found another paint program that was so functional and yet so perfectly usable. I weep every time I have to result to MS Paint to do something.

ArkPanda:Sounds like it wasn't the computer so much as the art program it was using. It was a proprietary graphics file for some program that hasn't existed for 29 years.

I get that, but I'm still surprised it took three *years* to unlock the images. Its not like they were intentionally encrypted. And I have a hard time believing whatever compression algorithm (if any) they were using would be that complex to someone who knows imaging.

thespindrifter:dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

I still don't get the draw, but I do find it hilarious that even though I can never find my keys or my cell phone or where I parked my car, I know for a fact that the cheat code for "Ghostbusters" the game was "Owen", and POKER would lock up a running TRS-80 or C64.

Old nerd here.

If you have a 1 copy of something, that literally could be destroyed by making another copy(like the data of the pics) then the last thing you would do was daisy chain a few old hard drives together and hope for the best.

thespindrifter:thespindrifter: dr.zaeus: The recovery project was initially thwarted from viewing the actual images as the data was saved in an obscure format that modern Amiga emulators could not read.

Maybe I'm a big ol' nerd, but I still have a completely operational 500 and 1000 sitting in my basement. Are you telling me that they had to resort to "reverse engineering" the format, when it took me 5 seconds to find a working one for $100 on eBay.

It's not like this shiat is some lost Sumerian tablet or something, it was only 29 years ago for Christ's sake.

My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

I still don't get the draw, but I do find it hilarious that even though I can never find my keys or my cell phone or where I parked my car, I know for a fact that the cheat code for "Ghostbusters" the game was "Owen", and POKER would lock up a running TRS-80 or C64.

Farking autocorrect!! POKE182. ARRRGH!

Also, how sad is it that dad can still use 35 year old discs, but I can barely recover data from 10 year old hard drives or optical media? We need better ways to ensure the long term viability of digital media; so much of our history and technology is going to be lost forever because of optical media "rot" and VHS tape degradation.

There is this thing called 'the cloud' which will host pretty much everything in a few years.

As I noted above, there weren't old copies of this software lying around it was all prototype stuff.

Duane Dibbley:thespindrifter: My dad is currently sitting at home using multiple Commode64's. He copies 30 - 35 year old floppies over to "new" blanks that he buys from eBay, because now they're starting to finally show signs of data degradation. The software to make bit-by-bit exact copies was prevalent in the 80s... All these "nerds" needed to do was go to a few Web forums to find old users like my old man who would gladly have sent a new copy for free.

Unfortunately the time will come when working 5.25" discs will be near to impossible or impossible to find. Although it's less than 100% authentic he may want to invest in something like this:http://www.sd2iec.co.uk/id14.html

It's an SD card reader that connects to an actual C64 to read and write disc images. It even looks like a tiny wee 1541 drive.

Freakin' AWEsome. Thanks for that! Dad will love us forever for this! :D